The world’s first AI-powered smartphone will make its debut! Nubia is building a mass-produced flagship.

According to Fast Technology on July 8, the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-level Meeting on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence will be held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20.

At the conference, major new products, including the world’s first AI-powered smartphone, will be showcased.

After the news was announced, the title of “world’s first AI-powered smartphone” quickly became a trending topic, sparking heated discussions among netizens, with many speculating about which manufacturer produced the new phone.

Today, Ni Fei, President of ZTE Terminal Business Unit and President of Nubia, officially responded that the world’s first AI-powered smartphone did indeed come from Nubia.

Ni Fei stated, “This mass-produced flagship will make its first public appearance at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, where we will also reveal to everyone what an AI-powered intelligent body phone is.”

This also means that Nubia is about to release not an engineering prototype or concept product, but a mass-produced flagship model for the consumer market.

According to media reports, at the “AI and Future Growth” luncheon of the 17th Annual Meeting of the New Champions of the World Economic Forum held in June this year, Fang Rong, chairman of ZTE Corporation, revealed that ZTE’s new generation of AI mobile phones will be launched soon.

This is an important step for ZTE to extend intelligent capabilities from the cloud to the device side, providing an interactive experience that “understands and can do things”, thereby driving the growth potential of the entire terminal ecosystem.

It’s worth mentioning that the original Nubia M153 phone was released in limited quantities as an engineering prototype in December 2025, priced at 3499 yuan.

In contrast, Ni Fei explicitly stated that the world’s first AI-powered smartphone is a mass-produced flagship.

This also means that the device is expected to be officially sold to ordinary consumers in the future, rather than just being a limited-edition trial product.